by Alex A King
“He has a secret Merenda habit,” she told me as she lowered several sugary acorns into the box. “These are filled with hazelnut and praline. Trust me, he’ll love these.”
Next I stopped at the More Super Market for wine and selected a bottle of Assyrtiko from Santorini and and bottle of Muscat of Samos.
This evening, the Triantafillou brothers were sitting behind the counter while Stephanie Dola filed her nails. If they were bothered by her violation of the health code, it didn’t show.
“Aliki Callas,” the brothers crowed. “Kaloste!”
I accepted their welcome and wished them a good evening. “Kalispera, Kyrios Yiorgos, Kyrios Dimitri, Stephanie.” Stephanie reluctantly pocketed the nail file. She scanned the wine, placed the bottles in plastic bags. She was moving slower than usual. I wondered if she’d had a chance to approach the elderly brothers about violating labor laws.
“We have a new product. You want to try it?” she said.
New products rarely came to Merope, so this was a momentous occasion.
“What is it?”
“Bread,” Yiorgos Triantafillos said. “Harry Vasilikos’s death is a tragedy, yes, but his business lives on, and so must ours.”
Sure enough, a pile of Royal Pain bread was stacked between the Merenda and the olive oil.
“You were going to accept Kyrios Vasilikos’s offer?” I asked him.
He leaned forward, both hands on his walking stick. “Harry was an old friend. We owed him a favor.”
“What about Merope’s bakers?”
They shrugged in unison. “Business is business.”
A greasy spider tiptoed up my spine.
“Where did you get the bread?”
“The Thessaly Police brought it from Harry’s yacht,” Kyrios Dimitri explained. “It was our bread. We already paid him for it.”
“Have you sold any yet?”
They looked to Stephanie like she was the holy mount, not a high school dropout whom they refused to pay properly.
Stephanie said, “What was the question again?”
“The Royal Pain bread, have you sold any?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember.”
“Think hard,” I said. “It’s important.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s a good chance the bread was poisoned.”
Color bled out of her face, leaving her with two red stripes along her cheeks. Stephanie had never heard of things like blending and contouring.
“Virgin Mary,” she whispered, crossing herself frantically. “I sold one loaf.”
“Just one? Who bought it?”
“Kyrios Grekos. He said he was buying it because his mother would have hated sliced, packaged bread from a mainlander’s factory.”
Panos Grekos, Merope’s coroner. He had dead mama issues. “When?”
She made a face that said she ran on Greek time—and badly. “Earlier.”
I reached for my phone and called Leo.
“Tell me you’re not calling to cancel our date,” he said, voice deep and smooth.
“Postponing.” I told him why I was calling. He cursed the Virgin Mary, his great-grandmother, three goats, and a pumpkin. Apparently he wanted them to do something sexual, anatomically impossible, and illegal in several American states. Lucky for him, Europeans were more broadminded. From the way he ended the call midstream, I knew he was racing to his car.
I told Stephanie and the Triantafillos brothers not to sell any more of the bread, then I paid for my wine and rode towards home. The night was alive with sirens—police and ambulance. Leo had mustered the cavalry.
New plan.
Go home. Ignore the cakes in the box. Ignore the wine. Drink ouzo instead. Grapple with the whole succubi thing. Hope for something sappy on TV.
Could I convince Harry Vasilikos and the Marias to hide in the closet for a few hours? That way I could pretend they didn’t exist.
Kyrios Harry didn’t know yet that I was ditching his case. With Johnny gone and the Thessaly Police transferring his sister, there was nothing for me to do. The other suspects were scattered across Greece. He wouldn’t be happy and I wouldn’t get information about Andreas. Closure would be out of my reach forever.
The question was, could I live with that?
I dismounted at the curb. Kyrios Yiannis was there with a Greek leaf blower, also known as a broom.
“Smile,” he said.
“Do your job,” I said. He grinned and kept sweeping. I continued through the courtyard, then stopped.
“If I wanted to get rid of you, how would I do it?”
“You want to get rid of me?”
“No. It’s hypothetical.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
The dead gardener came from a generation that eschewed education above the grade school level.
“It means it’s pretend.”
“Pretend, eh? Let me think.” He rested his hands on the handle of the broom for a moment. “Find out what I hate and do that.”
“What do you hate?”
“Turks.”
Kyrios Yiannis was also from a generation that believed Turks were the devil. Forced occupation will do that to people.
“I don’t think Kyrios Harry cares about Turks,” I said.
“But he cares about something, I guarantee it.”
With that in mind, I jogged upstairs with the wine and cakes, not even remotely relieved that I didn’t have to get prettied up for my date with Leo. Succubi or not, now that I knew he wasn’t a serial killer, certain body parts were hot for him again. Mostly the ones below my hair and above my soles.
Across the hall, all was quiet. No German pop. No Kyria Olga laughing about how she’d won Bingo again.
Grief welled up in me the way it always did these days. Maybe I should invite Lydia over for dinner. Dust off my cooking skills and conjure up something sturdier than a sandwich. We could share funny stories about Kyria Olga, or pretend she’d gone on a vacation to Mykonos, hunting for old men in Speedos. Whatever worked to quell the sadness. Not tonight, but soon.
I tried turning the key but my door was already unlocked.
Strange.
Moving slowly, I nudged the door open with my toe until it was flat against the wall. My heart sped up. My mouth dried up. Different apartment, but the deja vu was blood curdling.
From the hall, everything appeared normal.
Almost everything. My living room was ghost-free. Maybe they were crowded around the bathroom mirror again. Vanity didn’t die along with the human body.
“Kyrios Harry? Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria, and Maria?”
Footsteps on the stairs, then a voice. “Are you talking to yourself? You are, aren’t you? Boy, you’re trela, even for a giant.”
Jimmy Kontos sat his child-sized kolos on the bottom step. He drew circles in the air beside his temples. The guy was a pain but his timing was convenient—convenient for me.
“Do me a favor,” I said.
“Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll steal your gold and your favorite axe.”
He flipped me off. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“I never joke about dwarves.”
“What do you want?”
“Go into my apartment.”
“Why? Is there a trap? Flour over the door? Water?”
“The door is open. Look: no flour.”
He started up the stairs. “Forget it. I’ve got places to go and people to do.”
“Thanks for nothing,” I called out.
I peered into my apartment. Maybe the Harry and the Marias had moved on. Their remains were gone, bits of the yacht were currently on their way back to the mainland, and the only survivor was scheduled to be airlifted to a different hospital. It made sense that they had followed their bodies. Didn’t it?
It was possible I’d forgotten to lock my door on the way out this morning. Wouldn’t be the first time. Merope’s underb
elly was seedy and sinful, but robberies were not the island’s crime of choice—not outside of tourist season anyway. The local criminal element considered it unGreek to steal from their neighbors, and on Merope we were all neighbors.
In I went, locking the front door behind me. The pepper spray I kept at the bottom of my bag came out.
“Harry? Marias? Anyone here?”
Silence. Not even a meow.
“Dead Cat?”
One room at a time. No ghosts in the living room. Or the kitchen.
I eased into the bedroom, pressing the door fully open with my shoulder, pepper spray in hand and ready to make an intruder cry and blow snot bubbles. And there they were, Harry Vasilikos, the Marias, and my cat, huddled together inside a ring of salt. The salt shaker was on the bedside table.
Someone had trapped them. I kind of wanted to know how because it could be useful.
“Who did this?”
Kyrios Harry’s mouth moved. Words didn’t come out. Dead Cat was spitting and hissing but I couldn’t hear that either.
I moved closer, lifted my boot, intending to break the circle.
Kyrios Harry pointed. His mouth opened wide. My cat hurled himself against the spiritual forcefield.
I pivoted on one foot, just in time to see the crispy visage of Eva Vasiliko swing my laptop.
She didn’t miss. Neither did I.
I collapsed in a pile of my own snot bubbles and tears.
Chapter Twelve
Someone was carrying me. Somebody big, warm, and strong who didn’t mind snot. I knew this because he wasn’t staggering and complaining about how I needed to invest in antihistamines. I felt my body being lowered onto a soft surface. My couch. Then a male voice said, “Hold out your arm.”
“What for?” My voice was thick, the words fluffy and squishy. I sounded like I’d been having a week-long affair with a barrel of ouzo and huffing capsaicin.
“I need to apply the leeches.”
Leeches?
My eyelids sprang open. It was him, the gothic novel escapee. As always, he was in black. It suited him. No—it was him. A second skin.
“No leeches,” I said.
He was smiling. The leeches were a joke—to one of us, anyway.
“What happened?”
“You were assaulted,” he said.
Details came back. The salt prison. Kyria Eva. Pepper spray. My laptop.
My laptop. I groaned.
My entire life was on that machine. Backed up to a couple of clouds, sure, but it would take time to set everything up again. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Flecks of my computer’s case rained down like confetti. Kyria Eva was a twig but she swung like she was in the major leagues.
Questions jostled to be first in line.
Why had she knocked me out? Had she escaped from the hospital or slipped the police? How did she convince the ghosts to stand still while she built a salt cage around them? Could she see them? Where was she now?
“Why are you here?”
The man in black brushed his hand across my hair. More bits of plastic fell away. His hand was hot and gentle. I closed my burning eyes and reveled in the aroma of good vanilla and expensive whiskey.
My eyes popped open. “Are you a ghost?”
“No.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Several.”
“Could you give me one?”
“You should see a doctor.”
Pain spidered out from my forehead as I winced. Now would be a good time to reconsider bangs. “I’ll be fine.”
His hand moved south to cover the burgeoning goose egg. Heat spread across my skin, through my bones.
“What are you doing?”
“Close your eyes.”
Happy to.
A long moment later, he pulled his hand away. The pain was gone.
And so was he.
Leo didn’t answer his phone, so I left a message. Next I called the police station and told them Eva Vasiliko was on the loose.
“We’ll send someone over,” Constable Pappas said. “And given that I’m the only one here, it will probably be me.”
“Stay away from my underwear drawer.”
He made a disappointed sound.
I walked softly through my apartment and carried a big stick. Well, a broom. No trace of Kyria Eva or her freakishly strong right arm. Hopefully someone would notice a burn victim streaking through the streets of Merope, wearing a hospital gown.
The ghosts were still surrounded by salt. Their faces ranged from grim to furious. I whisked through the ring with the broom. Dead Cat made like a cannonball and shot out. The others wobbled out more slowly.
“Your sister is a skeela,” I told Kyrios Harry. A she-dog.
His expression said he had serious regrets when it came to penning his Last Will and Testament. “Eva is as strong as the shell of an egg and as cunning as a sloth. I guarantee this was not her idea.”
“How did she get you into the circle?”
One of the Marias spoke up. “She made up a story about how none of us were really dead, and if we wanted to wake up, we had to stand still while she sprinkled the salt.”
“And you believed her?”
“I didn’t believe her,” another Maria said.
I swept the rest of the salt into a pile. “I told you you were dead—all of you except Kyria Eva.”
“We forgot,” the first Maria said.
The other Maria rolled her eyes. “I didn’t forget.”
“You were in that circle, too,” I pointed out. “You got in there somehow.”
Those rolling eyeballs of hers found a place to land, on the floor. I looked down. Sometimes a floor is just a floor. This was one of those times.
“You were talking to her in the living room,” one of the other Marias said to the eye-roller. The rest of the gaggle nodded.
“She said if I did not get in the circle, she would go to the hospital and kill us all.”
The other Marias crossed themselves dramatically. Prayers were said.
Kyrios Harry snorted. Sentimentality wasn’t his thing.
“Most people can’t see ghosts,” I said. “How was she talking to you if she couldn’t see you?”
My phone rang. Betty Honeychurch was on the other end.
“You shot the question up into the sky, so I couldn’t help seeing it. I hope you don’t mind. Your Kyria Eva walked next to death and her soul traveled, appearing in your apartment, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she could see the dead, even now that she’s awake.”
“I don’t suppose you know where she is?”
“No, luv. Wherever she is, her head is as silent as the grave.”
She blew me a kiss and hung up.
There was a knock on my door, followed by another. A rhythmic tapping. Some wiseass was trying to do a super-secret knock.
Constable Gus Pappas waved at me through the peephole. “I promise I won’t look through your underwear this time.”
I opened the door. At the same time, Lydia emerged from 201. She was dressed to kill and get off scot-free. Pappas puffed his chest out, tried to look cool. He touched his gun—the one on his hip. Another minute longer and he’d be hopping around like a Bird of Paradise in a David Attenborough documentary.
“Get in here,” I said to him.
Lydia’s glossy grin reached her eyes. “I see you have a thing for law enforcement.”
“Break-in,” I said.
Her grin fell away. “What are you doing?”
All these years on Merope and I still twitched when people used “What are you doing?” for “How are you?” I twitched when I did it, too.
“I’m okay—now.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” she said.
Off she went, hips swinging. Pappas watched her until there was nothing left of her but perfume.
“Wow,” he said.
I held my finger to my lips. “Watch this,” I whispered, pointing to the stairs.
Sure enough, Jimmy Kontos came trotting down. The rotten little shrimp extended his middle finger and scratched his nose on the way past.
“Bring me back some candy from the Wonka factory when you’re finished singing about naughty children for the day,” I called out.
“Go choke on a beanstalk,” he yelled back.
“You two are strange.” Constable Pappas followed me inside. “Talk to me about that woman.”
“She hit me over the head with my computer. When I woke up, she was gone.”
“Not her,” he said, picking up my few ornaments and setting them back down again. “We already know Eva Vasiliko escaped. I meant your neighbor.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get in line.”
“There’s a line?”
An image of Jimmy Kontos popped into my head. He was hiding in the bushes. “A short one.”
“Is she single?”
“Let’s just say she’s generous with her affection.”
“I like generosity and I like affection.” The constable grinned. “Could you tell her about me?”
“I could but I’m not going to unless you do your job.”
He grimaced. “There is always a catch. Okay, show me where it happened.”
Gus Pappas spent the next ten minutes wandering around my apartment, taking photos. He spent a lot of time in my bedroom. I went in to find him taking pictures of my underwear.
“Pappas!” I barked.
He leaped back.
I wagged my finger at him. “What did I say?”
“Something about not touching your underwear. But I’m not touching it. I’m just taking photos.” He nodded to the corner of my bedroom, where I’d swept the salt in to a small hill. There hadn’t been time to scoop it into the dustpan. “Cooking in the bedroom?”
“Ever read the Bible?”
“Not today.”
“That’s the last man I caught taking pictures of my underwear.”
“You look in a woman’s underwear drawer one time—”
“Twice.”
“Okay, okay. Twice. Are you going to tell Detective Samaras?”
“Are you going to shut the drawer and delete those photos?”
He quickly changed the subject. “How did Eva Vasiliko get in? And why do you think she came here?”